Guest columnist: The Second Amendment is an innate right for Americans

Tuesday

Mar 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 12, 2013 at 8:50 PM

No one can deny that to protect one self is an innate God-given right. It is primal and it’s also an American right given by our forefathers in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

John Nix / Guest Columnist

No one can deny that to protect one self is an innate God-given right. It is primal and it’s also an American right given by our forefathers in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Americans enjoy a general sense of security for the most part. We are insulated from military coups and tyrannical regimes, as is commonplace in some countries. For over 200 years, since gaining independence from the British, we have lived in a republic, free of violence from other governments and certainly our own.

This freedom and others are born out of our Constitution as was adopted September 17, 1787 and went into effect March 4, 1789. The first 10 amendments, referred to as the Bill of Rights, were ratified on December 17, 1791.

Contained in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is designed to be the protector of those rights. For example, the Second Amendment enforces and protects the First Amendment. The First Amendment reads as follows:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This opening to the Bill of Rights provides the core of what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Can you imagine a life living in fear of imprisonment for expressing our religious beliefs or even discussing the problems we see with our leadership? Can you imagine living in silence for fear of death or imprisonment?

The Second Amendment is designed to protect these very basic human rights. The Second Amendment states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What does this mean? To understand we must first understand when written in 1789, the colonies had just gained independence from a tyrannical government, the British. We were now the United States of America and it was very fresh in the minds of our leaders how important it was to safeguard our freedom.

They had lost their brothers and sisters to the advances of the British during the Revolutionary War, so this newfound freedom needed protecting.

The Second Amendment was written not to protect us from others, but to protect us from ourselves if our own government turned rogue.

There was no standing army at the time of ratification of the Bill of Rights so the “militia aspect” within the Second Amendment is often challenged. Opponents say we don’t need the Second Amendment because we now have a military.

This can easily be trumped by the very fact that a government with a standing army is all the more reason for the people to be armed. A military that obeys a tyrannical leader of a tyrannical regime is a danger to our way of life.

Ignorance breeds fear. Fear spreads like poison ivy. The Diane Feinsteins of American politics threaten our basic rights by marketing misinformation. Though her true modus operandi is to ban all guns except for the military and police, she and her cronies attempt to incrementally whittle away at our Second Amendment rights.

If she wins at banning “assault rifles,” an inaccurate term, then she goes for the jugular vein next. That’s just how liberal progressives operate and each time they “win,” we lose a little more freedom. The foundation of our nation is eroded through their wrongful association of firearms with evil.

Firearms used the wrong way are no way near as dangerous as someone like Feinstein using her office and authority to subversively cut the legs out from under our rights as a free people.

Without guns or weapons to protect ourselves from aggressors, we are completely vulnerable to outside attacks and imprisonment. Recent history proves that deception of the people can lead to genocide.

Adolph Hitler was quoted as saying, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.”

Hitler enacted a number of gun control laws that affected all citizens, with the exception of the military, but ultimately took all gun rights from Jews. In November 1938, Jews were ordered by decree to turn over all weapons including knives with the penalty of noncompliance being imprisonment of up to five years.

This was a precursor to their internment in prison camps and the holocaust resulting in the extermination of over 5.9 million Jews before Hitler could be ousted. Unbelievably, some people still refuse to believe the holocaust ever happened, that the death camps were non-existent and the intended genocide of the Jewish people is just concocted. Hitler was the personification of pure evil.

The Nazi’s were only one regime in history that used gun control to disable the public and further gain power and control. In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control with over 20 million dissidents being rounded up and exterminated.

China established gun control in 1935 and by 1952, over 20 million were rounded up and exterminated.

Uganda established gun control in 1970 and by 1979, over 300,000 Christians were rounded up and exterminated.

These are just a few results, but at a minimum, over 56 million people were executed as a result of gun control in the 20th century alone.

Gun control laws instituted in Australia have resulted in a rise in homicides of around 300 percent and armed robberies of 44 percent. It is now illegal to defend yourself in Australia. Do we want these problems here?

From these examples, it becomes clear that gun control laws adversely affect law-abiding citizens that own weapons for their intended purposes, self defense and sport.

Think about the following: there are around 3,000 abortions performed daily since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case whose ruling made it legal for mothers to abort their young. Since that case, there have been well over 50 million abortions.

Why is abortion significant to our gun control discussion? It’s important because those persons politically aligned to support laws prohibiting law-abiding citizens from owning firearms or certain types of firearms also tout the tragic death toll of people killed by firearms. We hear about the gun violence death toll all the time from the mainstream media but when was the last time you heard a reporter give numbers on how many abortions were performed that day?

In 2011, there were 8,583 gun related deaths in the U.S., less than one-third of 1 percent of the total death toll. This number does not include unborn children since they are not counted as a death statistic. Now multiply 3,000 abortions per day times 365 and you will find that the total number of abortions in 2011 is well over 1 million deaths.

So, there are more unborn fetuses murdered in three days than there are people killed by guns in the U.S. in an entire year. Does that put things into perspective? Why do liberal progressives believe it’s OK to murder unborn children but not OK to defend one self by exercising our Second Amendment rights?

From the above comparative analysis, it becomes clear that gun control is not at all about saving lives, but about power, control and indoctrinated fear. The left’s gun control dialogue is a smokescreen and political diversion crafted to steer the emotions of the public into conformity.

An example of this is the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that led to other copycat shootings and more political posturing. “Never let a good crisis go to waste”…. or a tragedy for that matter.

The Second Amendment was written as a protective safeguard against those politicians and extremists with malcontent for our constitution and our wellbeing. It was written for us, “We the People,” to aid in protecting our sovereign rights, innate to our unique American heritage.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. It would take repeal of the Second Amendment by Congress to take this basic right away. If this happens, even under duress, we are finished as the greatest country in the history of the world.

Make your voice heard. The time is now, not later, when your freedom of speech is stifled.

John Nix is the co-founder and partner at Matrix East, PLLC. He’s also the president of the CSS Neuse Foundation and the lead plaintiff in the Nix, et al v. Eric Holder case, for the reversal of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The opinions of the guest columnist are not necessarily those of The Free Press.